Dirty Laundry

I can’t believe it’s August already. The summer is just flying by and so is my time to get the edits done on CALL THE SHOTS. I’m on target to be finished by mid to late September but that might change as I progress. This book may end up being the longest of the three but Sean has really gotten himself tangled up in all sorts of problems and it’s taking me some time to extricate him from the whole mess.

I am giving a keynote speech at the Vancouver Public Library Book Camp this week and it’s taken me much longer to write and practice it then I had initially planned. I foolishly decided to go high-tech with this talk and am using the Keynote app on my Mac to go through the entire process of getting Swim the Fly published. That means I’ll be showing and reading the two page scribble I wrote at a writing workshop many moons ago. This is the piece that would eventually become the novel. I’ll also be showing my original notes and outline and book trailer. It was fun reliving the whole experience (and should help me with the talk I’m supposed to give with my editor Kaylan Adair at the Surrey International Writer’s Conference in October).

I’m a little worried though that using all this gear for my presentation is going to throw me. I usually just get up in front of a crowd, do a reading, talk a little bit about the writing process, and take questions. This will be a new experience for me. Hopefully it doesn’t blow up in my face. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Been so busy lately that my reading has had to take a back seat. Still, I was lucky enough to score an ARC of Tom Perrotta’s latest book, THE LEFTOVERS from one of my fab publicists at Random House Canada and I am absolutely LOVING it. It comes out in September and you should definitely pick up a copy. He’s a fantastic writer. One of my favs. He even made my list of funniest books for boys (and girls) in the Guardian.

That’s all for now. I’ve still got to pack for my trip to Vancouver, run through my talk once more, and get a few more pages done on the rewrite.

And if you STILL aren’t following me on Twitter then I feel sorry for you. My random thoughts are little gems to be cherished and savoured.